4 Hour Film Challenge - Behind The Door

BRIEF & PLANNING:

The Brief

When planning for our second 4 hour film challenge, we decided that it would be best to plan out different shot types in order to apply theories that have been studied, including Kuleshov's reaction theory. We also had to improve on feedback given from our peers last time which consisted of a clearer storyline, a variation of shot types and a consistent pace between scenes. We decided due to the brief, we were going to reiterate a horror theme within the same location as our previous project, due to old windows/doors being common conventions of the horror genre. The door would act as a build up device, a mystery into seeing what was behind the door in the creepy/eerie location. It was also important to support our research by incorporating the 180 degree rule, to maintain the audiences attention, so they will understand where the characters are in the scenes location. Editing was important to plan before hand as we were limited with only one camera, we had to think about editing the shots together, especially due to Match on action. This leads into cinematography becoming our primary focus, making sure all shots are reshot accurately in order to edit seamlessly.

Filming:

When filming, we encountered a few issues. One was initially trying to record the diegetic audio of footsteps, this was proven difficult as other students were working and talking at the same time, we resolved this by asking the others to be considerate throughout us filming certain clips. Another issue we had was technical, particularly camera and lighting. As we were shooting with lowkey lighting, we found that it was difficult to avoid grain (due to a high ISO), we added three different phone torches to help light the scene, but this could have been more effective if we used LED lights. We did three different points of view in order to complete match on action: point of view, a still shot from behind the character, and a tracking mid shot of the character walking towards the door. In one scene we imitated the point of view of the mirror, however, to exaggerate the genre and make the audience feel disorientated of some sort, we decided to create this angle canted/dutch.

Editing:

When editing, we had numerous issues in finding the right sound packs to conform and emphasise scenes in the horror genre. As a quick fix to rectify this problem, I used a royalty free ambient horror soundtrack; which conveyed to us a cold and empty room/area; we figured that the audience would have there own similar interpretations of this. We only used the warp stabilizer on the pan right shot of the character walking up the stairs (first shot), as during filming, the footage was showing where the tripod was jolting. The audio of the minion saying 'banana' was downloaded from a clip in the movie 'Minions', we decided to change the speed of this to 70% so it lasted longer in the sequence. Within the title at the end, we decided to use a Serif style font as these are conventions seen in other horror movies, including 'The Nun' and 'The Conjuring'.

Critique from peers.

The feedback from peers was positive, however there was some valuable advice that could have been taken into account for next time. One of which was that the character didn't seem very frightened, this we could understand and will make sure we adapt this to the next horror film we create (or for that matter any genre, as the character needs to fit within). Another flaw pointed out was that in some scenes, it was too dark. To prevent this in the future, we will try out LED's. We also broke the 180 degree rule slightly in one scene, which was accidental - we will pay closer attention and practice in future challenges.